Oliver and Company

This blog serves as both a means for maintaining contact with distant family and friends as well as a family journal. Other than capturing the cute and naughty behaviors of child #3 I've neglected the rest of us. So here is a little catch up on what we've been doing over the last few months.

Aunt Suzi came from Utah and spent Christmas with us. The boys loved having her here and it was nice to have another girl in the house.  We asked her to stay but for some reason the air mattress in the living room and sharing a bathroom with two little boys with bad aim just wasn't convincing enough. It was also nice to spend time with Nick's brother Mark who has been away at training for the Army.

With the start of the new year Carson began playing YMCA basketball. It was a lot of skills to grasp all at once but he has made huge strides and enjoys practicing and playing with his friends. Best of all is that he constantly asks if we can turn on a college basketball game, Nick and I couldn't be more proud!

Spencer and Nick traveled to San Francisco at the beginning of this month for a visit with Spencer's hand surgeon. We had noticed that his right hand (the 2nd surgery done) just didn't seem right. Turned out that his little finger is dislocated due to weak ligaments and will require another surgery, most likely this year sometime. Even rarer than the birth defect itself is this weak tissue result after surgery so our doctor is currently conferring with other professionals on the best way to proceed. What can we say, he is one special kid with one special set of hands! The best news of all is that it doesn't bother him and won't for a long while until his hands are full grown. In fact he has recently learned to ride a bike (with training wheels) and got his first experience with learning to ski with Dad. He loved being on the slopes and riding the chair lift, he had to be dragged back to the car after 6 hours.

Jamison continues to keep us busy and smiling with all his new tricks. At nearly 11 months he is over walking and onto running and climbing. In fact just yesterday he climbed out of his crib in the morning. Now granted the mattress was not on the lowest setting but still the rails reached up to his chest level. You can be sure less than an hour later the mattress was down as low as it could go and Jamison wailed about it during both of his naps. Some of my favorite (safer) tricks are folding his arms for a prayer and waving madly as Carson leaves on the bus and as Dad walks in the door after work. For fun one day in January we put a pedometer on Jamison to prove my point that he never stops moving. After 15 minutes he had taken nearly 400 steps. . . at 10 months!

Nick and I are just trying to keep up with these three and life in general. Nick did get to go out for a few duck hunts with his Dad this winter. And I got a trip alone to Utah to meet my newest niece (Jana and Anthony's first) Zoe at the beginning of January. Nick gets double points for watching the boys while the pukies were making the rounds. He himself got sick  while I was gone but he didn't tell me until after I got home so it wouldn't ruin my trip. . . he's great I know! He and I both just signed up to run the Seattle Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon in June. My original goal was to run a marathon in between each child (which I did after Carson) but I never took into account that with more than one child I wouldn't have the time to train for one. So after Spencer I tried a triathlon and now after Jamison a 1/2 is about all I can squeeze in. I've promised myself I will do at least one more marathon in my lifetime. . .